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Watermarking

Hello everyone,

I am thinking about putting some of my photos into an online gallery. I am wondering about watermarking. Should I watermark each photo? Or does it really matter? I have looked around at other galleries and have found some that do watermark, and some that don't.

If you're on Photoshop, remember you can set up an action to watermark your photos in batches... plus you can save it as a copyrighted .jpg too.

All that aside, if the images you're posting are going to be small (say 400px by whatever) then it probably doesn't matter in either case because even if someone saves your photo from the website, there's not much they can do with it anyway... other than stare at it.

If you're on Photoshop, remember you can set up an action to watermark your photos in batches... plus you can save it as a copyrighted .jpg too.

All that aside, if the images you're posting are going to be small (say 400px by whatever) then it probably doesn't matter in either case because even if someone saves your photo from the website, there's not much they can do with it anyway... other than stare at it.

Then the little Action window will pop up. You'll see some playback icons at the bottom of the window... Stop, Record and Play... in that order.

When you click "Record" you'll be prompted to give your new action a name (in this case "Watermark" I suppose. You could just as easily call it "Goldilocks").

From the moment you hit enter to save the name, every thing you do in Photoshop until you click the "Stop" icon will be recorded. So if you re-size, if you add a pattern, if you save for web, if you close the file... it would all be added to that action until you hit "Stop" to turn it off.

Now ehn you open a new file, all you have to do is click the "Play" icon from the Actions menu and Photoshop will automatically go through all the steps for you... even down to saving and closing your file.

I use watermarks mainly on the carnival web site I build, because people kept printing off my work, so now if they want a non watermarked photo they have to pay for it - mind you some people will print off whatever. I tend to put a faded watermark right across the middle of the picture at a 45 degree angle so it would be very difficult to even the best photoshop user to remove.
I also use Digimark - which I think is one of the best systems as your pictures are protected internationally, the only problem is it is expensive.

I've actually seen threads in other forums about how to remove watermarks from images, and some people are quite good at it. So I wonder if watermarking is really useful.

The only thing I do to protect my images is simply not post them in large sizes. I've seen way too many people posting images on flickr at full resolution, which seems to me to be an invite to take the images and use them as you wish, regardless of what the actual image license is. I remember reading an article recently about one such image of a 14-year-old girl that was downloaded from flickr and used as a porn movie DVD cover.

Watermark if you like, but I'd also recommend posting only small image sizes online so that they can't be used in print. Nothing bigger than 600px on the long side.